Feedback: Using Formal and Informal Assessments to Advance Student Learning

Name of Student: Lionel Tessier
Grade: Middle school
Topic: Earth Science - Earthquakes, etc.
Inquiry/Science Practice Addressed: Gathering/organizing information
Type of Informal Assessment: Graphic organizer
Type of Formal Assessment: Quiz

Purpose:

Effective teaching requires assessment of student learning on an ongoing basis. For this task you will provide a description of the ways in which you conduct informal and formal assessment in your classroom. You will provide a copy of a formal assessment you used to analyze what students learned across several lessons. You will be asked to cite specific examples of what students know and are able to do based on the student work samples you provide. The analysis of what students have learned should also provide a basis for future instructional plans.

Feedback

Presentation of Assessment Artifacts

• Present - Learning objectives for the unit that your assessments are designed to address are explained.
• Present - Copy of informal assessment, including directions, evaluation rubric/criteria, answer key, and description of how you plan to use information obtained from assignment.
• Present - Copy of formal assessment and scoring criteria, including directions, evaluation criteria/rubric, an answer key, and a description of how feedback was communicated to students.
• Present - Evaluation criteria used for both informal and formal evaluation/assessment.
• Present - Marked copies of students' work for both informal and formal evaluation/assessment.

Assessment/Evaluation Analysis

• Present - Description of assessments, including the range of thinking and skills required to complete the assessment successfully.
• Present - Describe how assessment criteria were communicated to students.
• Present - Explanation of what you expected to learn from assessment.
• Present - Description of what concepts from your teaching addressed by the assessments.
• Not Present - Explanation of how assessment accommodate students with different learning styles and needs.
• Present - Explanation of why you used the evaluation criteria that you chose.

Analysis of student performance

• Partially Present - Description of what your assessments indicate about your students know. Cite specific examples from their work as evidence.
• Partially Present - A summary of what what you believe each of your example students knows based on your assessments.
• Present - Aggregation of your data - Report the performance of the class as a whole on your formal assessment.
• Present - Disaggregation of your data - Data representation showing differences between groups.
• Present - Summary of differences in student group performance.

Comments:

• You analyzed your students' use of the GO at a high level, i.e. some used it to study but most used it store information.
• At some point, you want to think about the specific information you think they should include so that you can give more helpful feedback, e.g. I thought we talked about... maybe you need to add some more about....

Reflection

• Present - Comparison of your learning objectives for the unit with the requirements of your assessment.
• Present - Description of what did you learned about your instruction based on students' performances?
• Present - Description of what would you do differently next time you teach this unit and why.
• Not Present - Description of what will you do to improve your assessment tasks.

Comments:

• Again, you seem to be considering how students used your assessments, but you now need to visualize the "good life," i.e. what should my students be doing during this assessment and then how to I leverage them to do it without making it onerous?
• It sounds like you want students to study. So how do you make that happen?